Writers Block

~ rbonini

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
  – Peter Ustinov

Right. There is no denying it. I am suffering through a period of writers block.

Granted, blogging, tech news, commentary and open source software aren’t my main priorities in life.

I’m even having trouble fitting in the photography and the photo editing.

So what’s up man??? I’m not going into it ( I have no wish for things to pop up in Google searches for the rest of eternity), but suffice it to say that its easier being lazy than getting on with it, at the moment.

The 7 habits ( which I really think it is a great book) don’t get followed religiously. However, the 7th habit itself, sharpen the saw says the essentially we need to look back at times and get our heads right, the previous 6 habits right before we can more forward. At least that is my interpretation of it. I’m a great fan of the notion that you have to win the private battle before you can tackle the public one. This acknowledges that fact that the public and private can be very different sometimes. And the fact that we can retreat into our shells sometimes.

So while I’ve absolutely no intention of giving up blogging, FriendFeed, my RSS feeds, I’m also not declaring a hiatus. I’m just saying that posts may not come thick and fast, but they’ll come.

I have ideas, I have things I’d like to do. But just can’t get round to them.

So. Who has tips for getting things jumpstarted?

Apple’s Saving Grace – I’m Not Sure

~ rbonini

 apple-new-macbook-hands-on-top

That’s the new Macbook on top (via Engadget).

We still have the old one around, for the reduced priced of $999 ( or £719).

I’m wondering how much of a price difference there is between this one ( the $999/£719) and your Typical Dell.

13” Macbook (£719- base):

  • 2.1GHz
  • Intel Core 2 Duo
  • 1GB DDR2 Memory
  • 120GB hard drive1
  • Intel GMA X3100 graphics

The Dell Inspiron 1525 from dell.co.uk (£399 – no customisations):

  • Intel® Pentium Dual Core Processor T3200 (2.0 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 1 MB L2 cache)
  • 15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280 x 800) Display with TrueLife™
  • Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100
  • 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2×1024]
  • 250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive

Ok. Here is the same 2.0 GHz Inspiron 1525 from Dell.com ($699):

  • Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5800 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
  • Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280×800)
  • 3GB2 Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
  • Size: 320GB3 SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
  • Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100

That’s a £310/$200 difference in price.

Of course such a comparison doesn’t take into account the MacBooks multi-Touch trackpad or Apple’s legendary Customer Service ( Dell Uk is good, too), or Vista Media Centre that is bundled With Vista Home Premium, or Dell’s cheap colour upgrade.

There’s a gap. But is it Worth It?

Sliverlight 2 Ships!!!!

~ rbonini

The next version of Microsoft’s Flash competitor is out.

And why is this big news? Well, a number of things stand out about this release.

The first big one is the number of languages that you can use with Silverlight: VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby. though this, potentially isn’t the whole list. Any language that is targeted for the .Net CLR can, in theory, be used. This opens up the number of developers with the skills to use Silverlight. Microsoft may not have the install base that Flash has, but its making that up  by allowing as many developers as possible to get started quickly.

So Microsoft will leverage the .Net developer corps as well as the Python and Ruby community to jumpstart Silverlight and Silverlight Adoption.

In addition, Scott Hanselman says that you can use Eclipse to code Silverlight:

But there’s also http://www.eclipse4sl.org/. Yes, that means you can code Silverlight in Eclipse. Details and progress at the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight Blog. It’ll be licensed under the EPL 1.0 License.

 

Scott Guthrie  adds (I missed this on first reading):

Today we are also announcing that Microsoft is partnering with Soyatec to sponsor additional tools for developing Silverlight applications using the cross platform Eclipse development platform.  Click here to learn more about this and download the free Silverlight Eclipse plugin.  Click here for a step-by-step tutorial that walks-through how to use their Eclipse tools today to build a Silverlight 2 application.

The other big thing, at least for me is the tools library. This has been the one thing stopping me from enjoying Silverlight to the full.

Scott Guthrie provides the details:

Today we are also announcing the "Silverlight Control Pack" – which will deliver dozens of more controls that you can use with Silverlight 2.  We will continually add new controls to the control pack over the next few months (we expect to ultimately have more than 100 controls total).  The first release of the control pack will include controls like TreeView, DockPanel, WrapPanel, ViewBox, Expander, NumericUpDown, AutoComplete and more.  All controls will ship with full source, and with a OSI license that allows you to modify and use the source for any purpose.

Let me repeat that: All controls will ship with full source, and with a OSI license that allows you to modify and use the source for any purpose.

Unbelievable. I’m gonna have some serious fun playing with and tweaking those controls.

This is yet another element of Silverlight that will attract developers in droves. It all fits into to Microsoft’s pan of driving adoption of the platform on both the developer and client sides. I mean, Flash has no controls (except the most basic root level elements). And here is Microsoft offering developers the nirvana of controls and full source. It will boost productivity not only for developers, but also for designers who want to add that extra special flourish for their customers – its just a small tweak away.

Also, there’s one little line in Scotts post that jumped out at me:

We are also announcing today that we are releasing the Silverlight XAML vocabulary and schema under the Open Specification Promise (OSP), which enables anyone to create products that read and write XAML for Silverlight.

That’s really interesting. Is Silverlight XAML going to become like XML is now? Where we output XAML on the fly? The possibilities that can come out of this little bombshell are quite amazing. can’t wait to see what people come out with.

That’s what got my attention (of course, there is more in Scott Gu’s post)

And just to wet your appetites, Scott Hanselman has a talk at PDC which includes Silverlight and his now famous Babysmash application that will showcase the networking capabilities of Silverlight:

I’ll also show a Silverlight version of BabySmash that talks to the same server-side endpoints, and we’ll all (the audience) run BabySmash Silverlight on our laptops during the talk (better than just checking your email, which is what you usually do in talks) and see if we can’t crush my server live. Then I’ll talk about new .NET 4.0 features that I could use to take the whole solution to the next level.

The Boom is Over

~ rbonini

It is all over Techmeme and FriendFeed: Sequoia Capital (the venture capitalists behind Yahoo and Google, to name just two), have called off the tech boom and told their companies to start preparing for the worst.

image

Lets think about this for a second. Is the technology sector as a whole vulnerable to this downturn? Yes, but probably not that much.

Consider Google as an example. Google gets bundled with every install of Firefox ( and if memory serves, some OEM PCs as well). And Google is pretty much the homepage of the Internet. So Google’s traffic probably wont suffer that much.

However, Google make money off ads,and it requires advertisers to buy those ads (or be charged for them). Now this could be very bad or very good depending on the industry doing the buying.

For example, Jeremiah Owyang just said on FriendFeed:

“The economic downturn is a good thing for social media, it’s going to force innovation, revenues, and productivity benefits –the other tools will fall by the wayside. Agree or disagree?”

So either ads will become more aggressive in an effort to lure ever reluctant consumers into the open.

Or they will cut back. Some ads just don’t work as well as traditional methods.

My bet is that, as Jeremiah said above, the online space of ads and social media will be leveraged to an ever greater degree and firms try their level best to stay above water.

So why did Google’s stock drop yesterday? Again, I think that investors are nervous that Google, while having a very broad range of services, hasn’t spread its revenue streams widely enough.

Google need to figure a way to monetize Youtube ( for starters), rapidly. Youtube gets millions of views per day that Google earn $0 from.

I’ll tell you what Google should do. They should go to Adobe and license that audio-to-keyword tech in CS4 and run every video on Youtube through it.

Gmail is another one. Personally I have never EVER clicked on a link from the Ads in the sidebar. Sure they are accurate and frighteningly well targeted, but I have never clicked on them.

For the tech industry as a whole, software is integral to the lives we now live. It ain’t going away anytime soon.